Air conditioner wars!

Well, we're at it again.  It's been ninety degrees over the weekend and my husband and I are into the air conditioner wars again.  I say leave it off during the day and just turn it on at night, he says leave it on all the time!  I say we get fat and lazy when we have the air conditioner on all the time, that our bodies do not adjust to the summer temperatures especially our appetites! He says, so what, I'm hot!

I grew up with out a whole house air conditioner until I was about twelve.  That year, my mom was pregnant with my brother and it was the hottest summer on record.  Many, many days over one hundred degrees.  We got a whole house air conditioner that year.  Before, we just had a couple of window units, one in the kitchen for when we were cooking or canning and one in the living room. We kept the doors to the bedrooms closed and re-opened everything up at night and turned on the attic fan.  Now, I'm a pretty hot-natured person and I can remember waking up in the middle of the night drenched with sweat and dragging a chair out into the hallway to turn the fan back on.  I do not want to go back to that again.  But, I think we can all survive during the day without air! Well, not air, we need that to breath obviously, air conditioning. 

I spent my days as a child laying under a big tree or playing in the pool or some other activity in the shade.  The outdoors forced me to be creative and I think that's why I love nature so much as an adult.  My mother didn't want us to lay around inside fighting with each other and watching tv, not that we had cable, it didn't exist.  She would work outside in the garden in the morning and then sew clothes or clean in the afternoon.  We stayed outside and out of her hair.  We didn't expect her to entertain us or come up with fun projects for us to do.  You didn't say you were bored around my mom.  You'd find yourself picking beans or folding clothes or clipping weeds.  I do my own kids the same way.  Being bored is something that spoiled kids say. Busy, working kids do not get bored.  I tried to never be bored! 

I have to say, my husband did a pretty good job of leaving the air off this weekend.  It forced the kids to be outside.  We have a lot of trees on our property, a hammock for reading and napping and a fort for anything else you'd like to do.  We even have a pool.  My kids did a good job of not saying they were bored either.  Couldn't hurt that I posted the 'If you are bored....." job chart on the fridge either.  I guess finding their own activities beats sweeping out the garage, weedeating, pulling weeds, etc.